


Open Doors and Manual Locks

by uro_boros



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4503051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uro_boros/pseuds/uro_boros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today is simple: chili dogs and lemonade and Dick playing the role of older brother well enough that Jason lets himself buy it. Today, it’s easy enough to blame the Pit for what Jason Todd is and isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Doors and Manual Locks

“I came back wrong,” he suggests, and he’s comfortable to deal in the murky twilights of the half-truth. He doesn’t say that he was born wrong.

He  _isn’t_ sure if he was born wrong. On some days, he’s convinced of it. 

But today is a good day: today is chili dogs and balmy weather, Gotham at rest. It’s Dick Grayson’s arm slung around his shoulder, companionable rather than stifling, and being at peace with the Jason Todd he is at the moment, who might have come back wrong

It’s a good day, so he doesn’t bring up that they weren’t really friends before he died, much less brothers. They aren’t like Dick and Tim, or Dick and Damian, or even Tim and Damian.

Dick freezes mid-sentence, and the squeeze he gives with the arm around Jason’s shoulder is more instinctual than thought about. “No, you didn’t,” he insists, features exaggerated into a frown.

“Sure, I did,” Jason says and shrugs. Bites off another piece of the chili dog and steals Dick’s lemonade to wash it down. Dick’s got a screwed-up, tense look on his face. Jason rolls his eyes. “Don’t think about it too hard.”

He doesn’t think about the Pit much. There isn’t much to think about, in the end. He was dead, and then he wasn’t. He’d been okay with dying. In some ways, it felt like a relief for all the pain to stop, to die good and proud and brave. To die as someone Bruce would value. The problem was that Bruce hadn’t valued him the way he hoped, and that’s where the anger started and festered and rotted.

Dick understands angry at Bruce, but he doesn’t understand Jason-angry at Bruce. In some ways, it’s deeper. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly what it is; Jason wasn’t enough.

But today is good, he reminds himself, pushes away the thoughts of Bruce and home and family. Today is simple: chili dogs and lemonade and Dick playing the role of older brother well enough that Jason lets himself buy it. Today, it’s easy enough to blame the Pit for what Jason Todd is and isn’t.

“You’re getting better,” Dick argues. It could be about the lower body counts or his willingness to work more with the family. It could be about the fact that Jason’s more than just angry all the time, like he was when he first slipped back into Gotham and found the same exact city dying in the same exact ways. It could be because chili dogs had been his offer to Dick, and not the other way around.

“Maybe,” he agrees lightly, because things work out nice for Dick Grayson, and Jason -- the part of him that’s still really Robin, all these years later -- wants to work out nice for him, too. 

Dick smiles, pleased, and it’s enough for today to just be a good day.

It is.


End file.
